Makbul Rahman has voted in almost every state election since the early 1980s in West Bengal. Yet he is among millions who have been denied the chance to exercise his democratic right in a vital election beginning on Thursday that is being fiercely contested between a powerful local party and Narendra Modi’s BJP.
Mr Rahman, a 73-year-old retired government employee from Murshidabad district, has spent much of the year to date trying to get his name restored to the electoral roll, attending appeal hearings about a long-running process by India’s election commission, known as the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, to update the voter list.
